Ted
The pilot formerly known as Twin Engine Ted
- Joined
- Oct 9, 2007
- Messages
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iFlyNothing
As I've alluded to elsewhere, I broke my wrist on my last RV trip. The story belongs here because, well, this is how I broke it.
We went to Laguna Seca raceway for a weekend of vintage motorcycle racing (spectators, not participants). It was a fantastically fun weekend. I've wanted to go to Laguna Seca for decades, and "drove" probably thousands of laps on that course in Gran Turismo back in high school and college. Aside from Nurburgring, that was my favorite track.
While there, I got to run parade laps on the GS, which was extremely fun. I couldn't help but giggle going through the corkscrew:
I then rode the GSA up to get a picture with the corkscrew sign:
For reference, this is up a somewhat steep hill. You can see better in this picture from our campsite, I circled the sign:
From there I had to get back down. This has a few challenges, as I was starting going with the big bike by myself on a hill, in this case specifically sideways. The ground is also very sandy in these parts, something that I don't have a ton of experience on. I ended up deciding to take a single track trail through the woods to the left of the sign in the above picture.
This proved to be a bad decision.
I ended up picking a bad path that had me going over a root, went too slow, and had to get going over it. I did, then hit a loose patch. The bike fell over to the left, which by itself would've been fine, I've dropped bikes plenty of times. But in this case, for some reason my left arm came off of the handlebars, and my left hand ended up in a position where I was basically punching the ground. I believe this was because a tree on the left was in a place where it jerked my arm some.
I still have the flashbulb memory of falling, watching my hand punch the ground, hearing my bone snap, and seeing my wrist no longer line up properly. I cursed a bunch, realized that this was a real break, I wasn't going to just walk it off, and proceeded to evaluate whether the rest of me was ok and then I left the bike and walked back to the RV (something around 1/4 to 1/2 mile).
Also immediately after the break I took off my glove and wedding ring, knowing swelling was coming and it was important to get those off before they would start presenting issues. I called my wife and calmly told her I think I broke my wrist. Apparently so calmly she didn't think it was that bad of a break.
She got back (was out with the kids) and then drove me to the ER, where they admitted me, took X-rays confirmed what was visually obvious (bone done broke) and got it set. I ended up going about 5-6 hours without so much as an Advil, until they put an IV in at which point they administered some morphine and sedated me to set the bone. To be clear, they offered an IV and morphine sooner - I refused, because 1) I hate needles 2) I avoid opioids as much as possible 3) it really didn't hurt enough for me to say something that strong was necessary 4) I wanted to stay alert and understand what was going on.
The bone got set and I was told in a week I'd get a cast and continue on. The next day the orthopedic surgeon who they referred me to locally wanted to see me immediately, and said surgery was really going to be a better option for the best outcome. Not what I wanted to hear, but his arguments all made sense. After some mulling over the best course of action, we scheduled surgery for that Thursday (3 days later). I now have a plate and screws in my left arm. I had my follow-up locally a week and a half later before driving home and they said everything was healing well, and I got my splint off and exchanged for a lesser splint.
Yesterday I had my first round of PT, and I'm now allowed to remove my splint for various things, including low risk (like sitting on the couch) activities, showers, and, of course, my exercises at home. I've lost a lot of range of motion and muscle mass in my left wrist/left arm, so that will be a road to recovery. But, both the surgeon and therapist think that my goal of going to the GS Trophy training class towards the end of September and then the competition in mid October aren't unreasonable goals, but they're not definitely doable.
I expect that I'm not going to be competitive in the trophy tryouts if I do go, but I view it mostly as a learning experience as I didn't expect I'd get selected anyway, and having a goal I think helps me.
I've thought about lessons learned from this. Motorcycling has risks associated with it. That said, after breaking my wrist everyone I came across who had a similar break told me their stories, and most of them were standard tripping and falling or the like. Part of the takeaway for me was that if you do active things, this sort of thing sometimes happens, and it could've been a lot worse. My gear did its job. My gloves (armored in the knuckles) transmitted the force of me punching the ground extremely well. I didn't break my hand or damage my knuckles, it was just the one bone in my wrist that was the weak point. Taking good care of my bones seems to have been beneficial (no surprise there).
Operationally, I fell in a bad spot, just what happened. That said, it has made me rethink how I should keep the seat for some level of more serious off-roading. My GSA is the tallest available factory, and I have a seat pad on it which raises it another inch or so. I'm not able to flat-foot it even with my height and boots. That by itself isn't an issue, especially on-road. Off road with the amount of camber this hill had sideways (and differences in height) got a bit more marginal. I recognized this when I got up to the Corkscrew sign, and it was tall enough I ended up starting getting going side saddle towards the single track. If I'd been lower to the ground, I probably would've turned the bike around fully and just gone down the hill, which I think wouldn't have had any issues. I don't worry about this in my normal off-road riding, but admittedly - this is Kansas. We don't exactly have a lot of hills, and that's definitely a weak spot for me.
I started PT Tuesday and I'm already seeing some initial improvements in range of motion and general hand abilities, but I'm still not supposed to do anything weight bearing/strength related for a while.
Worse things have happened to better people, I'm thankful that this wasn't worse.
We went to Laguna Seca raceway for a weekend of vintage motorcycle racing (spectators, not participants). It was a fantastically fun weekend. I've wanted to go to Laguna Seca for decades, and "drove" probably thousands of laps on that course in Gran Turismo back in high school and college. Aside from Nurburgring, that was my favorite track.
While there, I got to run parade laps on the GS, which was extremely fun. I couldn't help but giggle going through the corkscrew:
I then rode the GSA up to get a picture with the corkscrew sign:
For reference, this is up a somewhat steep hill. You can see better in this picture from our campsite, I circled the sign:
From there I had to get back down. This has a few challenges, as I was starting going with the big bike by myself on a hill, in this case specifically sideways. The ground is also very sandy in these parts, something that I don't have a ton of experience on. I ended up deciding to take a single track trail through the woods to the left of the sign in the above picture.
This proved to be a bad decision.
I ended up picking a bad path that had me going over a root, went too slow, and had to get going over it. I did, then hit a loose patch. The bike fell over to the left, which by itself would've been fine, I've dropped bikes plenty of times. But in this case, for some reason my left arm came off of the handlebars, and my left hand ended up in a position where I was basically punching the ground. I believe this was because a tree on the left was in a place where it jerked my arm some.
I still have the flashbulb memory of falling, watching my hand punch the ground, hearing my bone snap, and seeing my wrist no longer line up properly. I cursed a bunch, realized that this was a real break, I wasn't going to just walk it off, and proceeded to evaluate whether the rest of me was ok and then I left the bike and walked back to the RV (something around 1/4 to 1/2 mile).
Also immediately after the break I took off my glove and wedding ring, knowing swelling was coming and it was important to get those off before they would start presenting issues. I called my wife and calmly told her I think I broke my wrist. Apparently so calmly she didn't think it was that bad of a break.
She got back (was out with the kids) and then drove me to the ER, where they admitted me, took X-rays confirmed what was visually obvious (bone done broke) and got it set. I ended up going about 5-6 hours without so much as an Advil, until they put an IV in at which point they administered some morphine and sedated me to set the bone. To be clear, they offered an IV and morphine sooner - I refused, because 1) I hate needles 2) I avoid opioids as much as possible 3) it really didn't hurt enough for me to say something that strong was necessary 4) I wanted to stay alert and understand what was going on.
The bone got set and I was told in a week I'd get a cast and continue on. The next day the orthopedic surgeon who they referred me to locally wanted to see me immediately, and said surgery was really going to be a better option for the best outcome. Not what I wanted to hear, but his arguments all made sense. After some mulling over the best course of action, we scheduled surgery for that Thursday (3 days later). I now have a plate and screws in my left arm. I had my follow-up locally a week and a half later before driving home and they said everything was healing well, and I got my splint off and exchanged for a lesser splint.
Yesterday I had my first round of PT, and I'm now allowed to remove my splint for various things, including low risk (like sitting on the couch) activities, showers, and, of course, my exercises at home. I've lost a lot of range of motion and muscle mass in my left wrist/left arm, so that will be a road to recovery. But, both the surgeon and therapist think that my goal of going to the GS Trophy training class towards the end of September and then the competition in mid October aren't unreasonable goals, but they're not definitely doable.
I expect that I'm not going to be competitive in the trophy tryouts if I do go, but I view it mostly as a learning experience as I didn't expect I'd get selected anyway, and having a goal I think helps me.
I've thought about lessons learned from this. Motorcycling has risks associated with it. That said, after breaking my wrist everyone I came across who had a similar break told me their stories, and most of them were standard tripping and falling or the like. Part of the takeaway for me was that if you do active things, this sort of thing sometimes happens, and it could've been a lot worse. My gear did its job. My gloves (armored in the knuckles) transmitted the force of me punching the ground extremely well. I didn't break my hand or damage my knuckles, it was just the one bone in my wrist that was the weak point. Taking good care of my bones seems to have been beneficial (no surprise there).
Operationally, I fell in a bad spot, just what happened. That said, it has made me rethink how I should keep the seat for some level of more serious off-roading. My GSA is the tallest available factory, and I have a seat pad on it which raises it another inch or so. I'm not able to flat-foot it even with my height and boots. That by itself isn't an issue, especially on-road. Off road with the amount of camber this hill had sideways (and differences in height) got a bit more marginal. I recognized this when I got up to the Corkscrew sign, and it was tall enough I ended up starting getting going side saddle towards the single track. If I'd been lower to the ground, I probably would've turned the bike around fully and just gone down the hill, which I think wouldn't have had any issues. I don't worry about this in my normal off-road riding, but admittedly - this is Kansas. We don't exactly have a lot of hills, and that's definitely a weak spot for me.
I started PT Tuesday and I'm already seeing some initial improvements in range of motion and general hand abilities, but I'm still not supposed to do anything weight bearing/strength related for a while.
Worse things have happened to better people, I'm thankful that this wasn't worse.
